


The Sound of Silence

by Pineapple_Daddy



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, 聲の形 | Koe no Katachi | A Silent Voice (Manga)
Genre: American Sign Language, Angst, Bullying, Deaf Character, Depression, Disabled Character, Fluff, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, References to Depression, based on A Silent Voice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 05:55:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18243725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pineapple_Daddy/pseuds/Pineapple_Daddy
Summary: For Alfred F. Kirkland-Bonnefoy, life as an 11 year old is easy and outgoing. However, his life begins its first, and biggest, spiral downwards the day a deaf boy named Mathias Køhler transfers into his class. Things seemed to go alright at first until Alfred begins to relentlessly bully Mathias alongside his classmates. It is only when he takes it too far that Alfred realizes just how much damage his actions can cause and the severity of the consequences he'll face. On top of that, his once happy family is split apart and it seems as though nothing has any hope of improving. For Alfred, though, he only truly hits rock bottom when his actions force Mathias to move away and the entire school turns on him in response, leaving him to utter isolation.Now, dealing with the guilt of what he's done in the past and still trying to deal with having a broken family, Alfred finds a chance for redemption when he comes across Mathias on accident at the worst possible time.





	1. Younger Days

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based heavily off of A Silent Voice, specifically the movie adaptation since I have yet to read the manga. I highly recommend you go check it out as it is far better than anything I could ever write. It is not necessary for the enjoyment of this fic, but I still implore you to check it out if you haven't.
> 
> Also, fair warning, I am not deaf myself nor do I know anyone who is and I am not knowledgeable of any form of sign language. I'm using a website called hand speak.com as a reference for any sign language I do decide to use in the story. If any depiction of being deaf is found offensive to you due to personal experiences, please let me know and I will fix the problem as soon as I can. Finally, because I have no experiences with deafness myself, most of what I write about it in this fic will either be based of the movie, A Silent Voice, or my best approximation of what it's like based on what I can learn about the disability.
> 
> With that in mind, I hope you enjoy!

Childish innocence was a dangerous thing, especially when learned the hard way. I was only eleven when I figured that out for myself at my own destructive hands. I was young and carefree and all too willing to get into trouble simply for the sake of having something fun to do. But back then, it was ok because everyone I knew did it, too. Me and all my friends, we would always cause some sort of mischief, even at the expense of others. What we didn’t know, however, was that it would also be at the expense of ourselves, too.

We didn’t care about consequences back then; we were too young to understand the severity of them fully. Though, I was easily the worst out of all my classmates when it came to being reckless and harmful. I was loud and outgoing and willing to do whatever it took to entertain myself and my peers. That was why, on that fateful day, my life began a long downward spiral into an abyss I struggled to find my way out of.

The day had started normal, with all of my classmates chattering amongst themselves just before class officially started. I, however, had taken to simply fiddling with my mechanical pencil while I waited for class to start as everyone around me was busy with something else. The bell rang, causing everyone to quiet down and take a seat, but the teacher himself wasn’t here. Just as whispers questioning what was going on started, the teacher made his appearance with a student in tow. Who the student was, I didn’t know, meaning they probably just transferred here.

The new student was a boy, probably the same height as me, who appeared rather pale with icy blue eyes and light blonde hair that stuck out as soft spikes. He stood at the front of the room alongside the teacher and had a small smile on his face, keeping silent while the teacher addressed the class. He didn’t seem too bad, so far. Maybe he had even piqued my interest a bit.

“Good morning, class. As you can see, we have a new student joining us today,” the teacher announced. He turned a little towards the new kid and gave him a tap on the shoulder, causing the kid to look up at him. “Go on, introduce yourself.”

The kid responded with a nod, but instead of actually introducing himself like he was told, he reached into his backpack and pulled out a notebook labeled “Notebook for Conversations.” I wasn’t the only one to notice the writing though, as whispering started up curious my classmates. Questions of “what does that mean”, “wait, what did it say”, and “why isn’t he just saying something,” were the most common things asked. Even I had to admit that something about this was strange and wouldn’t be just a normal new-kid-at-school type of deal.

My suspicions were confirmed when the new kid opened the notebook and held it up horizontally for us to read. ‘Hello! My name is Mathias Køhler,’ it read, prompting the whispering to get louder and more confused with even more questions.

Mathias flipped the page to reveal that there was yet more he wanted to tell us through writing rather than words. This time it said, ‘Whenever you want to talk to me, please use this notebook. I’d like to get to know you all through it.’

My eyes became glued to the strange newcomer who had almost immediately captured my attention with his unusual way of communicating. I had to know more, like why he was going through all this trouble if he could just talk to us like normal people do. Almost as if he could read my mind, the next page he flipped to managed to answer that burning question of mine that was most likely shared by the whole class.

"I can’t hear.”

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. What did he mean by that? Was he unable to hear anything at all? Was that even possible? Such thoughts never occurred to me before then and I found the mere concept to be completely alien and incomprehensible. I didn’t even know to react properly to the information given, and ended up shouting out, “That’s weird!,” completely on impulse, getting the attention of the whole class. But right then and there, I didn’t care about the attention I had unnecessarily called upon myself. I was too stunned by the new, otherworldly person who had, by some twist of fate, become the first unsolvable mystery in my life.

~~~

At first, most of the students had taken a liking to Mathias as I watched on from the sidelines. They were mystified and curious about this new person and his foreign way of merely existing. Excitedly, they all took turns writing in his notebook, but at the same time they were conversing among themselves and completely oblivious to just how much they were actually leaving Mathias out of, leaving him almost entirely in the dark. In their eyes, he was like a shiny, new plaything that could entertain them until they inevitably grew tired and bored of his “antics”, though none of them realized it yet.

When class was actually in session however, the first signs of an inevitable downfall reared their ugly head. Mathias tried his best to follow along with the lesson, but the teacher had a habit of explaining things through more of a vocal method rather than a written one. To help remedy the problem, the girl next to me had offered to take the notes for him each day. However, this had its drawbacks as she soon discovered when she herself starting lagging behind in class. It wasn’t too difficult to catch a conversation in which she would complain about it, saying how bothersome Mathias really was and that she regretted offering her help. No one ever disagreed with her.

Eventually, the other kids followed suit and started to get irritated with having to constantly write down whatever they wanted to say to Mathias. They didn’t understand why they had to go out of their way and waste so much time writing when it was easier and faster to just say what you wanted to say, even with knowing that he couldn’t hear anything. Mathias himself, however, was always cheerful and met each message and person with a bright smile. Either he was oblivious or he was pretending like he didn’t notice. I wish I had understood the gravity of those two realities at the time.

The day I decided to join the others in showing our growing disdain for Mathias, was a day when we had to take turns reading aloud in class. A girl in class had read as she was supposed to, and read well at that, but when she was finished, the teacher had criticized her before calling on Mathias to read using some sort of signal with his hands. Mathias stood, but when he actually began to speak, everyone in class had to take a double-take as they were unprepared for the mangled speech they heard. 

His words were garbled and strangled, coming out more as incomprehensible noises an animal would make rather than any sort of human language. His pronunciation wasn’t anything to write home about either as most of the letters were either mixed up with other sounds or just missed all together. When he was finished, the teacher said nothing about the horrible performance and instead simply moved on and called for the next student to read.

Noticing the disgruntled looks on my classmates’ faces, I decided that that moment would be the perfect chance to unknowingly begin my reign of terror on a boy who did not deserve such suffering. “Hr gudg hdi ak baj kap thuy ssb cjo,” I began on purpose. I didn’t even glance at the words in the book we were reading, I just skipped straight to making a mockery of how Mathias had read by making random noises.

Most of the class tried to hold back their giggles, but it was all too obvious that they were amused. Even as the teacher commanded me to sit back down and quickly moved on, I still felt satisfaction from my successful joke. In that moment, that single, life-changing moment, I regrettably realized that I could easily exploit Mathias’s disability for my own gain among my peers. After all, if everyone was fed up with Mathias already, then they certainly wouldn’t care if I made one big series of jokes out of him. In fact, they would probably find it enjoyable if I did.

So, I decided that, when given the chance, I would take the opportunity to entertain my classmates with a sick and twisted game.

The next day, however, a lady I’d never seen before was brought in at the start of class to teach us something called “American Sign Language” or “ASL” for short. She explained that, for 3 minutes at the start of class each day, she would teach us how to make different signs with our hands so we could communicate with Mathias easier. A few students questioned why they had to go through the trouble since it would just be easier for them to write in Mathias’s notebook. The lady tried to explain it to them, but they didn’t really listen to her and didn't care to listen either. Only one student had the courage to say that they would be willing to learn sign language for Mathias. That person being my very own twin brother, Matthew.

From then on, my brother began hanging out with Mathias and the two quickly became close friends, though alienated by everyone else. Now that most everyone was getting more and more fed up with Mathias’s antics, they all avoided him and anyone who dared to try and be friends with him. Matthew himself quickly became the target of bullying as well, only he could actually hear the insults being said behind his back. Not even I, with my popularity among our classmates, could get people to leave at least Matthew alone.

But since they weren’t really hurting Matthew or confronting him, I decided to let it slide thinking that it wasn't a big deal. My brother and I didn’t really spend that much time together during school anyways and he didn’t appear to care that much either. Even at home when Dad or Papa would ask us about our day, Matthew would still smile and tell them that it went good and tell them about the parts he liked. I figured my brother could handle it himself, so I instead just focused on making everyone at school laugh and have fun through my mischief. It wasn’t until it was too late that I realized the severity of the mistake I had made in coming to that conclusion.

Seeing as how I sat behind Mathias in class, I rolled up my classwork into a cone and shouted into it right next to Mathias’s ear. Every set of eyes in class was set on me and even Matthias turned to look at me, almost as though he could actually hear what I had just done. The teacher scolded me, of course, but the class also found it amusing with a few chuckles here and there. Though that wouldn’t be the end of my little stunt.

Later when the lunch period started, a girl tapped Mathias on the shoulder and asked about what was in his ears. I hadn’t noticed it before, but taking a closer look now, there appeared to be small devices in his ears that looked entirely strange. The girl asked if she could see them for a second and he took them out and handed them to her in response.

“Hey, let me take a look at ‘em,” I called out. The girl readily tossed them to me, much to the confusion and worry of Mathias. “What even are these things and- oh ew! Is that earwax?!”

Of course, I was just joking with that last comment, the devices seemed perfectly clean, but that wasn’t the point of what I had planned. No, the point was that I had thrown them right out the window of our second floor classroom right into the river nearby. They were light, so it didn’t really take too much strength to toss them that far. The class didn’t care and some even made passing sarcastic comments followed with a short laugh, but Mathias instantly panicked and rushed up to the window to see where the things had fallen. When he realized they were gone for good, he went back to his seat dejectedly.

My brother glared at me and went to comfort Mathias, and though it hurt a little to see that anger directed at me, I didn’t mind too much as no one else took problem with it. In fact, it felt a little satisfying to be able to amuse an entire class of eleven year old's. Since others liked it, I wondered if I could keep going like that and still be able to hear the muffled giggles of my classmates for the rest of the school year. It would be cool if I did, though at first I didn’t really test my idea out.

~~~

Unlike other kids, I had two dads, Arthur and Francis, but also unlike other kids, my parents tended to fight with each other more often than not. For the longest time, Matthew, Dad, Papa, and I had all lived together happily like any other family. Until recently, that is. With each passing week, their arguing and fighting about adult things I couldn’t possibly understand became more and more frequent. Nowadays, it seemed like all they ever did was fight. It got to the point where even Matthew, sweet, innocent Matthew, cracked and, for the first time in I don’t know how many years, I saw him cry.

Dad and Papa immediately stopped fighting each other to comfort Matthew when it happened, but it was in vain for the damage had been done. Salt was rubbed into that wound when Matthew confessed that he was getting bullied at school thanks to the stress and pressure of the situation. Even from where I was watching in the hallways, I could see the devastation on my parents’ faces as they came to a realization only they understood. Being so young, I didn’t understand what was going and when I finally did, it was too late. Before I knew it, my parents had gotten a divorce and Dad left with Matthew to somewhere far, far away.

It was just me and Papa now, with my one and only brother taken away from me and the man I had come to know as one of my loving fathers having abandoned me. I stopped calling him dad after that. Instead he became just another annoying adult, one named Arthur Kirkland. And Papa and I were now all that made up the Bonnefoy family, not the Kirkland-Bonnefoy family anymore. Just the Bonnefoy family. But even though I grew a disdain for Arthur, my grief over losing Matthew was greater. I didn’t realize it before, but now that he was actually gone I felt just how important he was to me.

We’ve been together ever since we were born. We shared every birthday, we were there for each other when no one else was, we even got adopted together into the same family. I still remember when we first went to school and our peers were amazed by the concept of near-identical twins, even if the small differences between us tended to go unnoticed. Or all the pranks we’d play on our parents or friends by pretending to be each other. Even the little things like telling each other ghost stories when we stayed up late without permission became irreplaceable memories that I wished I could relive forever. But now Matthew was gone and it was still too soon to say whether or not I would ever see or hear from him again. I didn’t have much hope for a good outcome.

Papa tried his best to comfort and support me even though I was sure he was suffering more than me, but it wasn’t enough. I ended up taking out my frustrations out at school on the one kid no one would care about. Mathias.

Now with Matthew gone, Mathias truly had no friends to speak of at school. I was free to do whatever I wanted, and that was exactly what I did. I shouted in his ear, tripped him in the hallway, wrote bad things about him on his desk and in his notebook, and even took up tricking him into taking out those things in his ears and throwing them away or breaking them entirely. I didn’t care, I just wanted to make someone else hurt just like how I did on the inside. But even after everything, Mathias just smiled and even tried to talk to me, though I just brushed him aside and ignored all of his attempts.

Each hand sign I would turn away from, each offered chance to write in his notebook resulted in it being thrown in the river or filled with inappropriate scribbles, and each attempt at verbal communication was scoffed at and belittled. But he never gave up. Time and time again, Mathias would try to befriend me only for me to turn him down in whatever way I thought would show him just how uninterested I was. For someone like him who had become the butt of my jokes to still act friendly towards me, there must have been something truly wrong with him.

But one day, I took things too far. I decided I would just forego trying to trick Mathias into taking out his ear thingies. Instead, I reached out from behind him while he sat at his desk and pulled them out myself. However, he instantly made a pained squeak and reached up to cover his ears. Other students walked up to see what was going on and asked him if he was ok, but the world around me fell silent and unimportant as I saw blood trickle down from his ears. 

My heart pounded in my chest and it felt like I couldn’t even breathe as I stared blankly at the scene before me, my mind struggling to comprehend what I had just done. In the end, Mathias had to go to the nurse’s office and I was sent to the principal’s office. Whatever was said to me, I just nodded along to silently as I couldn’t focus on it. Instead I just kept asking myself why I had done what I did. Never before had I actually hurt someone else bad enough to make them bleed, and that single action soon became a seed of guilt that took root in my heart for years to come.

By the time school was out, everyone in school, not just my classmates, had heard about what happened and I was side-eyed and given either dirty or nervous looks. I had no doubt that everyone thought I was a violent monster of some sort, or something along those lines. At one point, the people I thought I could regard as friends confirmed my suspicions when they confronted me and ended up tossing me into the river. The same river I had thrown Mathias’s things into for the past few months.

All I could do was sit in the shallow river and think about just how terrible my life had become in such a short amount of time. Was it some kind of karma? Or a sign from whatever god was out there that I had done one too many things wrong? I was there for so long that Mathias had accidentally stumbled upon me. I could see white bandages on his ears, no doubt covering where he had bled from, and turned away, instead choosing to stare off into the undefined distance. My attention was called back to him, however, when I heard the sound of splashing water. It appeared Mathias had rushed into the river and was now wading through the water towards me.

In a panic, I tried to get up only to slip on the muddy bottom of the river floor. I fell face first into the dirty water and resurfaced muddied and even more upset than before. But then Mathias reached out and offered me his hand, presumably to help me back up. 

“Why?,” I asked, simply staring at him and refusing to acknowledge the gesture. “Why are you trying to be nice to me? I’ve been a jerk to you this whole time! Is it because I remind you of Matthew!? Well, I’m not him even though we look alike and now he’s gone! Gone forever, ok!?” I grew increasingly angry with each word and by the end I had resorted to full on shouting. “Why am I even asking!? You can’t hear me anyways!”

Mathias drew back a little and instead pointed at me, then to himself, then brought his fingers together in a cross shape with the right one over the left, and finally repeated the crossing with left over right instead. “Ka weh peh frehs,” he tried to say, but his voice was just too garbled to understand.

“I can’t understand you! Why don’t you get that!?,” I shouted back at him. Digging through the mud with my right hand still plunged in the water, I grabbed a chunk of the wet earth and threw it right at Mathias, causing him to stumble back and fall into the water. “Just stay away from me, you freak!”

After that, I quickly scrambled out of the water and away from Mathias without glancing back. I ran and ran, only slowing down to a walking speed when I reached the street my house was on. I was still dripping wet and covered in mud by the time I made it home, but it was hardly any concern for me. When I walked in, I could hear Papa talking on the phone with someone, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out that it was probably my school from the way Papa responded to them.

“Yes. Yes, I understand. I’ll talk to him and make sure nothing like this ever happens again,” Papa said into the phone. “My apologies again for all the trouble he’s caused.”

I didn’t feel like sticking around for an inevitable lecture, so I started heading up the stairs, but Papa hung up before I could get to the top. “Alfred F. Bonnefoy, care to explain why I just got a call from your teacher?,” he called me sternly.

I stopped dead in my tracks halfway up the stairs, but I didn’t dare turn to look at Papa. “If my teacher called, then you should already know,” I answered with biting sarcasm.

“Then tell me why you’re all wet and muddy,” Papa demanded instead.

“I was playing in the river again,” I lied. “You know my friends and I do that sometimes.”

Papa sighed, clearly exhausted from all the things that have been going on as of late. “Be honest with me, have you been causing trouble at school?”

“...Just leave me alo-,” I started, but stopped when I turned around to see Papa looking me with tears in his eyes and an expression that was a mix between angry and disappointed. It was then that I realized running from one’s own problems was an impossible task. Especially when it came to something like this. Nothing hurt me more than seeing how upset Papa was right then and there. The mere feeling was comparable to the day Matthew had to leave forever.

“Go and clean yourself up, right now,” Papa commanded. “We’re going over to Mathias’s.

Without a word, I walked the rest of the way up the stairs and did as I was told. It would be easier that way than to make a fuss.

~~~

Even though I was told we’d be going over to Mathias’s place, Papa and I stopped at the bank first. Papa told me to stay in the car while he went in, but I had no clue why we were here at all to begin with. At least, until Papa returned with a stack of money in one hand. I didn’t ask, but I had a pretty good idea of what it was for. Namely, that the money was to pay back for all of the hearing aids I had broken, which was eight if I recalled what the principal had told me correctly.

It turned out I was right, as when we arrived at the apartment complex where Mathias lived, Papa handed the money over to a woman who I assumed was Mathias’s mother since she looked similar. Though I couldn’t tell what they were talking about since I was watching from the car, I assumed Papa was apologizing on my behalf. Eventually, Mathias’s mother said something and made a gesture that prompted Papa to turn back to me and gesture for me to stay put before the two of them walked off to someplace I couldn’t see them from.

I probably should’ve stayed put like I was told, but instead I decided to wander around to try and clear my mind. I didn’t stray too far from the car in case Papa came back before I did, though. However, I soon wished I hadn’t started exploring as I came across Mathias sitting on a park bench feeding some pigeons. Luckily, he hadn’t noticed me and I quickly scurried off back the way I came. After all I had done, I’d rather just wait in the quiet, lonely car than risk a confrontation.

But then Papa came back and got into the driver’s seat, though he didn’t quite start the car yet. When he turned to look at me, he gave me a smile, but I could easily see the blood dripping from his right ear. A few drops had already stained his white dress shirt. “You’re going to be nicer from now on, ok?,” he said softly.

“Yes, Papa,” I answered back slomenly. I’m sorry Papa, went unsaid.

~~~

The following weeks at school were some of the hardest weeks I’ve ever had to go through. No one wanted to hang out with me anymore, or rather everyone avoided me as much as they could. People I hardly knew and those I, at one time, considered a friend would trip me, talk bad about me behind my back, purposefully gang up on me whenever we played sports in gym class, steal my things and throw them in the garbage, dunk my head in the school’s toilets, toss me in the river, you name it. Whatever I did to Mathias was done back to me and more. I became the school’s resident punching bag.

Because of this, I had noticed that Mathias got less and less attention as all the abuse became focussed on me instead. I quickly realized I had really messed up if everyone I’d ever known thought that I was more worthy a target for their hateful words and harmful actions than the weird, deaf kid who was subject to the same thing for months upon months just before. Little did I realize that things could still get worse.

There came a day when I hid myself away in the janitor’s closet right after school so I could avoid having to deal with my classmates. By the time I left the closet, not a single soul could be found in the building. Or, at least that’s what I thought until I returned to my classroom to grab the things I left behind. Instead, I found Mathias at my desk rubbing something off of it with some kind of cloth.

When I made my way over, I saw that my desk had been covered in writing from my fellow classmates telling me to get lost or calling me whatever they thought would be most insulting and that Mathias had been trying to clean it off. I didn’t say anything, I just stood there frozen in place wondering why things turned out this way. And then I felt a light tap on my shoulder.

I looked up to see Mathias giving me a sympathetic smile, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I just shoved him against my desk and gripped him by the shoulder. “Why? Why do you do that?,” I asked, frustration seeping into my voice. “Why do you always make that stupid face, like nothing’s wrong? Like you don’t understand what’s been going on ever since you came here! It’s your fault that my life is nothing but garbage now! I wish you never came here!”

Mathias looked back at me, fear written all over his face. It was clear that he didn’t understand what I was saying, but still understood that it wasn’t anything good. I gripped his shoulders harder, causing him to wince in pain.

“Don’t you ever get angry!?,” I continued to shout. “Well?! Why won’t you do anything?!”

But just as I asked that, he turned his head and bit my hand. Hard. I let go with the hand that was bit, but used my other one to grab onto his spiky hair and tugged on it while he tried to shove and kick me away. “What the hell is wrong with you!?,” I yelled at him, though I didn’t have any right to.

Mathias managed to kick me hard enough to push me into the desk behind me and took the opportunity to shove me to the ground as well. Before I could do anything, he got on top of me to pin me to the ground and started punching me to the best of his ability. At this point he had started to yell and scream as well, but it sounded so strangled and choked that I failed to understand any of the meaning behind it. Considering the circumstances, however, it was safe to say that he probably finally snapped from anger after all.

“Get off of me!,” I yelled. I tried to get back up, but Mathias pushed me back down and just kept beating on me despite my attempts to fight back or defend myself. “I just can’t understand you!”

By the time things calmed down, I was left silent and motionless on the ground and Mathias was crying. All the fighting spirit either of us had in ourselves petered out and now it was just a moment of awkward tension shared between us. A brief thought flashed in my mind and I wondered how things would’ve ended up if we could’ve just talked to each other normally.

That fight was the last time I saw Mathias.

For the rest of the week he didn’t show up for school and by next week the teacher announced that he had transferred schools. But even though Mathias was gone, my troubles remained. I became known as the bully who forced a kid to transfer schools and in turn was ostracized and outcast by anyone and everyone who caught wind of the news. Even when I tried to be my mischievous and outgoing self, the one everyone once loved, and pretended that nothing ever happened, I was still ridiculed. I was not alone in the tormenting of Mathias, but I had become the school’s martyr for it.

I deserved it, after all.


	2. Good To See You

No one ever tells you that Junior High and High School get easier, and for good reason, as I learned for myself. Even as I grew older and started attending a different school in the city, some classmates of mine would follow along and make sure everyone at my new school knew about what I had done. Just as I thought I had another chance at making new friends, my hopes would be dashed by the mistake I had made that followed me around like a possessive ghost. As a result, I started to push people away in fear of being rejected and faced with the daily torment I didn’t realize I had become used to. The voices of others had become static, incomprehensible noises dubbed over with my self destructive thoughts.

When I walked through the halls, it felt as though all eyes were on me even as I refused to take my eyes off the ground to know whether or not such a thing was true at all to begin with. The chatter I couldn’t bring myself to understand was a constant reminder that I wasn’t alone and that anyone could be watching. Watching and waiting for me to make my next little mistake so they could make it into another thing that could be held against me. And a spotlight, made of my own self consciousness, was always the one ready to point those mistakes out all on its own.

My own mind only made things worse. Without the distraction of schoolwork, I was left on my own to just think, which was something I underestimated the true danger of. I would cast a glance over towards my new classmates, who never really seemed to pay me any mind as much as before, and would imagine what they were saying. And the things they said, would always come out as something harmful towards myself.

“That kid over there, y’know, Alfred? Yeah, he’s kind of a massive loser.”

“You don’t even need to tell me that, I can already tell from just how creepy he is when he looks over this way!”

“I wonder if he gets lonely being by himself all the time. But I guess it makes sense, though, after all the monstrous things he’s done.”

“I know right? I just have to ask why he even bothers living at this point.”

Things along those lines and so much more were a constant in my life as I couldn’t escape my own conjured words. Somewhere along the line, I stopped trying to outrun them. 

I also stopped looking people in the eye as well. I would stare off at the ground or the side or their lower body if I was feeling extra courageous, but never at their face and especially not their eyes. The myth about eyes being the window to your soul has been around for as long as time, and in a way, I had come to believe in it. Each time I made accidental eye contact, it felt as though that person instantly knew everything there was to know about me. Such an intimate thing, it was too much for me to handle anymore.

Outside of school life, however, I worked a part time job and occasionally sold off any of my belongings I didn’t need, starting off with the old comic books I got as a child. I worked and worked and sold and sold all in an effort to pay back Papa for the hearing aids I had broken so long ago, yet still felt like it had happened yesterday. But nearly fifteen and a half grand wasn’t an easy thing to pay back. In the end, I had to sell everything I owned from nearly all my clothes to even the furniture in my room, including my bed.

But all that mattered was that I had still managed to get the money in time in one way or another. I had set the deadline for reaching my goal for the eleventh of April and I had done just that. All I really had left to do was quit my part time job, take the money I made out of the bank and close the account, cancel my phone plan, and other things along those lines. Once the deadline hit, I wouldn’t need any of it anymore, or anything at all for that matter. So that was what I did and when I was done and the eleventh arrived, I left the money in a package labeled “Here’s the money I owe you” right next to Papa on his pillow as he slept, and left the house. Probably for the last time.

I didn’t look back as I took slow, casual steps away from the house I had grown up in. I didn’t want to think about how Papa would be left all alone there as the last of his family left him. I needed to keep focus and not lose sight of why I was doing this in the first place. To make the world around me a better place.

And so, I walked and walked for what seemed like an excruciatingly long eternity until I finally reached my destination. One of the numerous bridges in town, or more specifically the one highest above the river it was made to go over. I was lucky that this one also happened to be the most unused of the bridges, too, since it was in one of the quieter parts of town. As it was, there was hardly another soul that was around besides me. A car or two passed by every now and then and some people were having fun down at the river bed a ways away, but besides that, there wouldn’t really be anyone to interfere.

So I took a step forward and climbed on top of the railing, making sure to keep my balance as I did so. From where I stood, I looked out into the city one last time, feeling the light breeze flow through my hair. It was a beautiful city, and it would be even prettier very soon as a little more of whatever taint it had disappeared forever. To be lost to the calm waters below, even as that calm turned into ripples of loss. Finally, I closed my eyes.

A deep breath to calm my nerves, a soft exhale, a slight movement forward, and then the moment was suddenly all gone, replaced by an impromptu tug pulling me back onto the concrete of the bridge. What should have been a quick spike in pain from hitting the water’s surface, instead became a jolt and a quickly fading, dull pain brought on by hitting concrete just a little too hard, though not hard enough to deal lasting damage.

I slowly opened my eyes after being suddenly brought back to reality and found myself face to face with someone all too familiar. Someone I never thought I’d see again or even believed I had the right to see again whether I wanted to or not. The blond, spiky hair, the ice blue eyes that stared straight back into mine, the pale skin that almost seemed to glow in the sunlight. Everything about him brought a single image to my mind. The image of Mathias Køhler trying desperately to be my friend despite how I treated him. I had no doubt that they were one and the same.

If there was a god I believed in, this would have been a sign sent down from a higher power such as them.

After awhile, I still didn’t get up from where I had landed on the ground nor did I say a word, so Mathias took it upon himself to make the first move. He first pointed to me, then pointed his fingers at each other and twisted them with the right hand twisting one way and the left hand twisting in the opposite way. It was a gesture I had once learned to mean, “Are you hurt?”

I didn’t respond immediately. Instead I stood from the ground and dusted myself off before I answered him. “F-I-N-E,” I spelled out in ASL after gesturing towards myself. I then brought my right hand up, touched my chin, and then brought it out to say, “Thank you.” I wasn’t perfect at ASL, but I had studied it long enough now that I could be considered fluent at a basic to intermediate level.

And that was all it took to stun Mathias into an unmovable silence. He didn’t sign or attempt to speak or move even a single centimeter as he stared at me like I had performed an unspeakable action that forced his brain to shut down. 

Seeing as Mathias was left entirely frozen, I took my chance to continue. “You remember me,” I started to sign, though I did so somewhat slowly. “Do you not?”

A slow nod was all I got in response and, for a moment, I feared that Mathias would run away, but he never did. Instead, when he finally did sign something, it was a question. “How do you know -,” he asked, but I missed the last sign due to how fast the rotating movement he did with his hands was. Though, I figured he was asking about how I knew sign language based on the context.

“Long class three times a week,” I signed back. To most people, that wouldn’t sound like a proper explanation, but that’s not the case for sign language. The proof was in how Mathias perfectly understood each sign I gave.

At that answer, Mathias relaxed a little and gave me a small smile. He then pointed to himself and held up his fingers in an L shape before moving them outwardly to simply say, “I’m surprised.”

“Me too,” I signed back, though it brought a small amount of confusion to Mathias’s expression. But then I added, “What are you doing here?”

Whatever confusion Mathias felt left instantly as he answered me a little more cheerily. “Walking home.”

Even through the positive façade, I could tell he felt a little hesitance to ask me the same question or mention anything that had just happened not even five minutes before we came face to face with each other. And left with nothing else to say, I signed, “See you later. Be safe.”

But then Mathias panicked a little as I began to turn around, frantically signing, “Wait, stop!,” by wiggling his fingers and then bringing his right hand down onto his left hand palm in a chop motion.

His signs worked and I stopped my movement and waited for whatever else he had to say, not realizing the anxiety starting to tug at my heart. “Come visit me to hang out,” he started with a series of signs. 

Such a statement left me puzzled. It was so out of left field that it left me wondering how I should respond for what was probably too long of a time period. “Where can I find you?,” I eventually asked.

“W-H-I-T-M-A-N park every Sunday,” he answered. “Eleven o’clock.”

“Ok,” I signed, but for once I felt a small amount of courage bubble from within me and I continued with a question that I never would’ve expected to ask myself. “Then can you and I be friends?”

I immediately wanted to slap myself for asking such a stupid question out of nowhere as I was certain the answer would be a laugh and a firm no right to my face, but that feeling was almost immediately replaced with a mix of surprise, confusion, and even some relief. Instead of treating me like I wasn’t worth the time of day like he should’ve, Mathias just gave me one of his brightest, happiest smiles. One that I hadn’t seen since we were just children too innocent and oblivious to the future ahead of us.

“Sure,” he answered simply.

~~~

Since my original plans had been unexpectedly derailed, I ended up going home, but I didn’t feel like I had wasted my time. Quite the contrary, actually, thanks to the intervention of Mathias Køhler. It felt like a sign from some higher power that there was still something left for me to do, something for me to live for. I just wasn’t sure if I actually deserved the chance to make amends for what I had done. I could be stubborn like that, secretly demanding another sign to be thrown my way rather than just taking the one that was blatantly handed to me. I still wasn’t even sure if it was ok for me to still be alive despite being saved by the one person who should hate my guts more than any other.

The next thing to make me question what in the hell I had been thinking of doing earlier that day arrived when I came home. On the walk back, I had hoped that Papa would still be asleep when I got back so he wouldn’t question what I was doing up so early, but I wasn’t that lucky. Instead, I came home to the smell of pastries being baked and bacon being cooked in the kitchen. I slowly rounded the corner to find Papa wide awake and cheerily making breakfast.

“Good morning, Papa,” I greeted as I took a seat at the small dining room table.

Papa turned at the sound of my voice and returned my greeting with a bright smile. “Good morning, Alfred! It’s rare to see you up so early.”

And it was that comment that let me know I was basically dead meat on a train headed for disaster. “Uh, yeah, I just thought I’d change things up and take an early morning walk,” I lied poorly before trying to change the subject. “But you’re pretty cheary this morning. I thought you weren’t much of an early bird either?”

Papa turned back to what he was doing with a light chuckle. “Well, that’s because I found this when I woke up today,” he said before taking out the bundle of money I had made from one of the drawers. “Nearly fifteen thousand and five hundred dollars in cash. I’m pretty proud of you for being able to make this much money.”

Even at the calm and supposedly reassuring words, I was still tense as though everything would come crashing down on me at the drop of a mere feather. “I’m… glad you like it. It was kind of a pain in the butt to get, y’know.”

“Oh, I know all right,” Papa agreed before setting down a plate of croissants and bacon with a cup of orange juice in front of me as well as taking a seat across from me. “Here, eat up. You deserve a good breakfast after all the hard work you’ve been putting in to pay me back.”

“Thank you,” I said, but I ate with hesitancy, never once taking my eyes off Papa. He just gave me a blissful and happy look as if there was more to say, and yet nothing at the same time. “Is there, um, something else you wanted to say, Papa?”

“Oh, not really,” he answered casually. “It was just, I was wondering, why would you ever want to kill yourself?”

That single question nearly killed me on its own as I accidentally choked on my food a little in surprise. This was it, this was the end, I was sure of that. “I-I’m not sure what-”

“Oh, don’t even try to deny it!,” Papa snapped, slamming his hands down on the table and standing up so abruptly his chair fell backwards. “You sold all of your belongings, cancelled your phone plan, closed your bank account, tore off everything on your calendar after the eleventh of April, and you woke up early for a change only to leave the house for whatever reason without telling me! It’s just so morbid, I can’t figure out what other reason for any of it that there could possibly be!”

Papa picked up the money where he left it on the counter and held it above the pan of bacon still sizzling with grease and cooking oil as the burner it sat upon was still very much turned on. “Promise me you won’t go through with it or else I’m frying all the money you earned!”

I couldn’t quite think properly in that moment. All I could see was the image of Papa with a bloody ear after paying for all the hearing aids I broke and the scar it left that I could see even now despite Papa’s mid-length hair. If there was ever something I would never ever want to do, even against my own free will, it would be hurting Papa.

“I promise I won’t do it,” I said in a daze. “Just, don’t do anything crazy, Papa.”

“Crazy?! You wanna talk to me about crazy?! You were gonna off yourself!,” he shouted and lowered the money closer to the frying pan. “Be specific; what are you not going to do?!”

It was then that I finally snapped out of it and got out of my seat, frantically waving for Papa to stop. “I-I promise I won’t kill myself! I won’t do it, I swear!”

“Do you really mean it?,” Papa asked, voice cracking with tears that threatened to spill at any moment.

“Yes, yes I mean it! I will never try to kill myself again, please believe me!,” I begged.

“So you did try to kill yourself this morning!,” Papa pointed out, more upset than he was before. “How will I know you won’t try it again?!”

I winced at my mistake in wording and timidly tried to explain himself. “Yeah, I… did try to kill myself this morning by jumping off a really tall bridge, but I didn’t do it! I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“And why didn’t you do it?,” Papa demanded, though it was a question I wasn’t sure how to answer.

Why didn’t I go through with it? Even though Mathias pulled be back onto the bridge, I could’ve just gone through with my plan after he left. But I didn’t. I decided to go home instead. “I… I think I made a friend instead,” I decided to answer with, though I sounded unsure about my own answer.

“You… what?,” Papa asked softly, disbelief in his tone. It was clear he didn’t understand my answer and truth be told, I didn’t understand it either. But before I could continue at all, Papa’s grip on the money loosened and he ended up dropping it in the fryer. Within seconds all of the cash I had gone through the trouble of earning burst into flames much to both mine and Papa’s surprise.

The fire alarm started going off, beeping its loud obnoxious beep, but we both ignored it as we panicked and frantically tried to put it out. Papa went to get water from the sink while I took off my shirt and started beating the fire with it in an effort to smother and suffocate it into going out. The end result was a shirt covered in the charred remains of what was over fifteen thousand dollars and a drenched frying pan turned black from the contents burned within it.

When everything had calmed down, Papa was the first one to say something. “Um, sorry about burning your money,” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to. But, you did only earn it to kill yourself, so I don’t really want it anyways.”

“I’ll… earn it back,” I said.

“I know you will,” Papa responded. “But I don’t want you to worry about it too much. You just make sure you keep that promise, ok?”

“Ok, Papa.”

The rest of the day was spent sitting in my room just thinking about everything that had happened in such a short time while Papa was working in the salon that was built into where the living room would normally be. I asked myself why I had to tell Papa I made a friend when that wasn’t really the case. Mathias had accepted my offer of being friends, but he probably only did it out of pity. Was it really ok for me to consider us friends? Was it even ok for me to go see him at the park tomorrow? He invited me to see him, but even so. It didn’t feel right to me. Nothing ever did anymore.

I paced back and forth in my room, contemplating whether or not I should go. Waiting for another sign to tell me what to do. And then that sign came in the form of a flyer being blown up against my window. Opening my window and popping out the mesh screen, I reached over to the flyer and grabbed it before putting everything back in place. The flyer itself didn’t seem to be related to any of my internal conflicts at first, since it advertised a fireworks show that was going to be held in August at the end of summer break, which was still months away. But then I looked closer at the place it was going to be held. Whitman Park, the very same one Mathias told me to meet him at. The flyer’s big bold words demanding I go to Whitman Park was exactly the sign I needed.

And so, I decided with absolute finality that I would go and see Mathias tomorrow like he invited me to do.

~~~

The worst time for regret to show up would have to be right before doing something potentially life changing. That was exactly how I was feeling as I stood right in front of the gates leading into Whitman Park. My nerves could make me sick with how jittery they were and my mind was racing with countless doubts. Thoughts asking if Mathias didn’t actually show up or if he changed his mind about inviting me were the biggest doubts I had. But I came all this way, so I might as well see it to the end. Whatever happens, I probably deserve it.

So, I ventured into the park in search of Mathias. Whitman Park was probably the smallest park in the city, but that didn’t mean it would be easy to find someone in it. The whole park was thick with trees and had thin pathways. The only open area for recreational activities was the area surrounding the lake as it lacked the trees and flowers that the rest of the park had. With that in mind, I decided the first place I should look is the lake.

Sure enough, Mathias was there sitting on a park bench feeding the pigeons some bread. However, a younger boy, probably in middle school, was sitting next to him, too. The boy had pale, platinum blonde hair with equally pale skin and light purple eyes. Though it was hard to see past the scarf that covered the bottom half of his face, the boy looked to be pretty bored as he slowly swung his legs back and forth so as not to startle the birds. Interestingly enough, he also had an expensive looking camera around his neck.

I stopped dead in my tracks thinking that I shouldn’t have come here, but just as I was about to turn and leave, the boy looked up and took notice of me. He turned and tapped on Mathias’s shoulder before pointing to me. Mathias looked over at me and smiled softly as he gave me a wave. It was too late for me to have second thoughts, so I started walking closer to the pair. Mathias, in turn, got up from his seat and pulled the boy up with him, causing most of the pigeons to get startled and fly off into the sky.

We met halfway and Mathias signed, “Good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too,” I signed back. “Who is this?” I gestured towards the boy for emphasis.

“This is my little brother, ----,” Mathias explained, but the unique sign he used for his brother was lost on me. “My other brother and I take care of him, but my older brother does most of the work. Today is my day to watch him.”

I almost couldn’t keep up with his explanation, but I still managed to understand what he meant by it. I gave a nod in understanding before signing, “How do you spell ----?”

“E-M-I-L,” Mathias answered before repeating the unique sign he had used before for emphasis. The sign itself was simple. Mathias merely made a vague diamond shape with his hands before moving them apart as though he were breaking it into two pieces. His expression even went so far as to pretend like he was actually straining to crack the diamond in half. I copied the movement to help me remember to use it when referring to Emil, which made Matthias smile. That gentle smile made even me feel a little happy, too.

I turned to Emil when I was done practicing the name sign for said middle schooler. “Nice to meet you,” I signed by sliding my palms across each other then pressing my closed hands against each other with the pointer fingers pointed straight up and finally pointing with my right hand at him.

“I’m not deaf, too,” Emil responded coldly before clinging a little closer to Mathias. “And it’s not that great to meet you.”

“Sorry,” I signed anyways. I could talk, but seeing as how Emil understood sign language, it just felt easier to keep signing. Emil just scoffed at my response though, and looked off to the side.

I looked up to Mathias to see him giving me an apologetic smile. “Sorry about him,” Mathias signed. “He can be kind of cold.”

I shook my head. “It’s ok. ”

“Walk with me,” Mathias signed, though it somehow felt like a demand when he turned and started walking down the park’s dirt path with Emil following along at his side.

I didn’t say anything, but I fell into step alongside Mathias. Actually, none of us said anything as we drew further and further away from the lake and into the natural fauna of the park. Admittedly, for once, it felt nice to have some company and be able to relax with them. Even though Emil occasionally shot a glare at me, I felt at peace with the sounds of birds chirping away and leaves rustling in the light, early spring breeze that went undisturbed thanks to the lack of the static chatter humans make. They were unfamiliar, yet beautiful sounds. Sounds Mathias would never be able to hear.

But as I glanced over at Mathias, he seemed just fine being able to walk with me and his little brother, almost like his life couldn’t be any better. And now that I was really taking the time to see him, I only just noticed that, after all this time, he ended up being a little taller than me. I was broken out of my staring stupor by Mathias tapping my arm with an opened notepad and pen. I took them and looked at what was written on the notepad.

‘Like what you see?,’ it read, to which I could feel my cheeks heat up with embarrassment for having been caught. However, that wasn’t all it said. ‘I noticed you’ve got glasses now. They look good on you.’

‘Yeah, I’ve had them for awhile. Turns out my eyesight is pretty crappy,’ I wrote underneath before handing the notepad and pen back. I was secretly grateful that Matthias offered a pen and paper to write with while they strolled through the forest. Walking and signing continued to be a struggle for me ever since I started studying ASL.

Mathias started writing something and as he did so, Emil was trying to take a peak, but Mathias would just keep holding the notepad higher and higher out of reach. It was kind of funny to watch until Emil eventually gave up with a huff. And then the notepad was handed back to me.

‘I know how that feels,’ it simply said. My expression fell a little at the implication in Mathias’s words, but I wrote down a response anyways.

‘Didn’t know you had any brothers,’ I wrote.

Mathias brightened when he read that, probably happy that he could talk about his brothers. Even though I forgot what it was like to have a loving family that was more than just Papa, I could still tell when someone loved theirs. And Mathias was the spitting image of someone who loved his family.

‘That’s right! Emil’s the youngest, and as you saw he can pretty cold, but he can also be hot-headed, too. Lukas is my other brother. He’s a little older than me, but you wouldn’t be able to tell that just by looking at him. You can, however, tell he’s older by how he acts,’ Mathias wrote.

‘And why’s that?,’ I wrote back.

‘He tends to be quite the mother hen to both Emil and I. It makes sense though since he, kind of, took over as head of the family after mom died.’

I stopped walking after reading that, not quite sure how to respond. Mathias and Emil also stopped with me, Emil looking between us in confusion as he had no clue what we were writing about.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ I ended up writing.

Mathias just shook his head before writing back, ‘it happened a while ago, so it’s fine now. Let’s keep walking.’

We did just as he wrote and continued, but I had no idea what to write down now. What was there to say after that? It’s not easy to start up a conversation right after someone drops information like that. I eventually figured out something, but it definitely wasn’t one of my best ideas.

‘I wasn’t sure if it was ok to come see you,’ I wrote to Mathias out of the blue.

Mathias thought it over for a second before flipping to the next page and responding. ‘I was thinking the same thing, actually. Kind of funny, isn’t it?’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. But, it’s always ok for you to come see me.’

I looked up from the notepad and found Mathias smiling brightly at me and just that simple look and that one statement was enough to make my heart skip a beat. If I was too distracted to realize we had looped back around to the lake, then I certainly didn’t notice the others had stopped walking until I had already fallen right into the water. I resurfaced coughing and sputtering up dirty lake water with Mathias staring at me in shock and Emil taking pictures while struggling not to burst into laughter. Mathias ended up helping me out of the water while Emil just stood back and watched with a small grin on his face. I’m sure my own face looked like a stop sign from how embarrassed I was.

It didn’t take long for Mathias to wade into the water after me. When he held his hand out to me, I was instantly transported into the past. To a scene that was all too familiar and all too upsetting. But, it was a scene that had a different ending in the past than it did now. Though I hesitated at the memory of me attacking Mathias with mud, I ultimately took his hand and accepted the help that I should have taken long ago. Even though I was too little too late for forgiveness, I didn’t want history to repeat itself. Not for Mathias.

Once the two of us left the water together, Emil immediately ran up to his brother to check and make sure he was fine. Matthias reassured Emil by signing, “I’m ok. Just a little wet,” before turning to me.

We just looked at each other for a few seconds that felt more like minutes before neither of us could help but burst into laughter. My laughter was restrained and cracked, showing just how unused I was to feeling anything like joy. But Mathias. Mathias’s laughter was very breathy and riddled with wheezes, but it was loud and confident. The kind of confident that said that, even if others find the noises he makes annoying, it’s ok because he’s just being himself. I could never get tired of that laugh.

But, was it ok for me to feel that way?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been awhile! My apologies for taking so long to get this out. I've had this sitting for quite awhile, but I ended up getting distracted by a lot of things and just never got around to it. I probably would've taken even longer on this chapter, too, if it weren't for my sudden burst of motivation to work on it. Said motivation didn't come out of nowhere, though. Actually, it came because I've started taking an ASL class! Which I am very exited for! This also means, that as I learn more about ASL through my class and potentially my own personal research if I find the time, I'll go back to previous chapters and fix them up to more accurately represent the ASL community and their culture.
> 
> And to whoever actually reads the notes on fics, thank you very much for reading mine!

**Author's Note:**

> One last thing to those of you read the notes and care enough; my apologies but updates to this story will probably be very infrequent. Please bear with me when it comes to this fic.


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